I Want To Go Home - 31

A Chance to Breathe

Waiting just long enough to confirm that Nemza had called upon no dark magic to undo her death in the immediate term, I turned my attention to the others. A quick look told me that Ne’avo was emotionally drained and exhausted, but in acceptable health. Sukura was still bleeding, but stable enough she wouldn’t need magical healing.

Turning further, though, I saw that Kel was—

“Aara, please check on Sukura,” I said, before rushing down to Kel’s side.

“He stopped breathing,” Uké’el whispered, her voice shaking. “He’s… we were too late.”

Crouching down beside him, I shook my head. “Take my hand.”

I saw hesitation and confusion in her eyes, but she took my hand with the one she still had all the same. Drawing on the bond we shared, I felt out to her spirit, and, from there, her connection of love to Kel’s own spirit.

His essence had only just begun to drift away, which meant, after warning Uké’el it would hurt, I pulled on the thread that still connected them, drawing Kel’s spirit back towards his body. When he landed, he let out a gasp as he re-entered it, but could manage nothing else as his body began to die again. Pulling his spirit back into his body kept it from drifting away, but it had done nothing to repair the damage that had been taken.

I had to scramble to begin applying healing magic, putting in rather more energy into it than healing wounds generally needed. Even taking into account the bloodloss he’d suffered. Kel had been dead long enough that nearly every cell in his body needed fixing.

Every cell was an interesting thought that floated in the back of my head. My life as Vazehr, I’d understood far more about magic and had been able to pull together such miraculous healing before, but my half remembered high school biology lessons were providing a finer knowledge of medicine than Vazehr had ever had. Which was making the healing easier than it would have otherwise been.

Soon enough, Kel was breathing. Slowly, but well enough he was out of the worst of it. Aara had hurried over at that point. She’d patched up Sukura and was ready to help tend to his needs as well. At least for a few minutes, until I told her to rest, feeling the exhaustion flowing out of her.

“The sooner I add the balms the faster he will heal,” she said weakly, as I nudged her away.

“He can wait a few hours,” I replied. “You need to rest yourself. You were holding your own against Nemza while I was out. That would drain anyone. Especially working without nature spirits around.”

“But…”

“Rest,” I said.

After a moment of hesitation, she gave a small nod and walked over to sit against a pillar. I then headed over to confirm Sukura’s health was as steady as I had first thought. Kneeling beside her, I found she was awake.

“We won, then?” Sukura asked, wearing a weak smile.

“Yes,” I replied. “I am sorry that you got hurt, though.”

“Surviving fighting a dark goddess is pretty good, injured or not,” she replied. “I think I’d like to sleep for a bit, though… pretty sure there was something in Aara’s balms.”

With that, her eyes closed, her breathing calm and relaxed.

-

It was a few hours until those of us who were conscious were reasonably functional again. Despite how concerning it would be for a living person, losing an arm seemed to have caused Uké’el pain, but was set to only be an annoyance until we found her a new one. Ne’avo went for a walk, looking for somewhere quiet to be alone, while I focused on helping Aara reach out through the fungal networks below us. The messages would only travel so quickly, but they would be faster than we would, as exhausted as we were.

-

The next day we prepared a funeral pyre for the remains Nemza had left out. I blessed the pyre with an incantation Sukura had known, and we set it to flame. The dark and sickly clouds above had begun breaking up, and the rising smoke seemed to help part them.

Ne’avo stayed out in silence until the fire was down to merely smouldering ashes. When she returned we were all ready to provide her comfort.

“Is the throne safe?” she asked, gesturing towards it, looming on a plinth over the chamber.

“I’m not sensing any magic from it?” I replied, turning to Uké’el and Aara for confirmation.

Aara gave a small nod. “It seems it is safe?”

“Never wanted to sit up there,” Ne’avo muttered, walking over to it. “But someone has to, to prove that Nemza lost.”

With that, she climbed the steps up to the throne, brushed a bit of dust off, and then sat down. Once she had, faint runes began to glow in the gold and ivory back of the throne, framing her form.

I realised I could read them, memories of my time as Vazehr now accessible, if a bit foggy. “Ne’avo… Wenzaw… Hyarst Aelvei… what does that mean?”

For her part, Ne’avo blinked, turning to stare at the throne’s back. “Huh. I knew it showed the monarch’s true name if they sat on it, but… I didn’t know it would pick out middle names.”

A smile spread on her face, only to be accompanied by tears. Aara was the closest to her, and so the first to be able to hurry up to her side, pulling her into a hug. Quietly, Ne’avo explained that Wenzaw was her mother’s middle name, and Hyarst from her paternal grandmother’s family name.

“And it means the throne accepts I’ll be a queen,” she mumbled, now that I had joined Aara at her side. “I was worried I’d have to give this up… that I wasn’t going to get to stay a woman.”

“As Kris told me, wanting to be a woman is probably the top sign there is of being one,” I said, hugging her.

And Aara, due to the latter’s small size between the two of us.

-

It was the next day before Kel woke up. Sukura had been at his side, with Uké’el having to take a small break to restore the connection between her spirit and body. She comforted him until Uké’el returned, letting Sukura hurry to call me over as well.

As I arrived, Kel still wasn’t fully coherent, visibly still terrified even as his mother held him. I crouched down beside him, offering my hand.

Grabbing onto it, he quietly mumbled, “Sorry.”

“For what? I’m the one who should apologise?” I said.

He shook his head, before curling up to hug his knees. “I... I told them...”

“Told them what?” Uké’el asked, tilting her head to try to make eye contact with Kel.

“That... where you went,” Kel mumbled. “When they...”

“We don’t blame you for anything, Kel,” Uké’el said. “It’s my fault for leaving you behind. I thought you would be safer. I’m... I’m so sorry.”

“Do you want to talk about what happened? How they got you?” Sukura asked.

Kel was quiet for a moment, just hugging his knees, before he let out a small nod. “After you left... some of those evil Elves came back. They were in the shadows. Looking for Emily... I don’t know how long they were there, but then they realised I might be useful? So they grabbed me one night, and... and they took me here. She agreed, and hurt me until I told her where mum and Emily and everyone had gone...”

“Oh... oh Kel,” Uké’el said, lip quivering before she pulled him into the best hug she could manage. “I’m so sorry. We should have found somewhere else for you to stay safe.”

“We’ll keep you safe now, though. All of us will watch you,” I added, trying to reassure him.

Sukura gave a nod as Aara and Ne’avo arrived, happy to add their support. It turned out that Ne’avo gave the best hugs of any of us, so Kel ended up settling in her arms, despite how awkward she seemed about it.

-

We spent the next few days not quite sure what to do with ourselves. Defending the Holy City seemed like the best task for us at the time, so we spent the time exploring the abandoned streets and buildings. The clouds had parted above, the city now bathed in midnight sun, which both meant that Ne’avo had to keep her nightglasses on whenever she went outside and that dark forces were hiding. Not that there proved to be many of them, and many were actually chained up.

It seemed that Nemza had been experimenting on her undead armies, and, in more than a few cases, I felt more like slaying the subjects was an act of mercy as much as cleaning out the city. The discoveries had also further strengthened my confidence that Nemza had been past any sort of moral event horizon.

Apart from those occasional horrors, though, the only other things to do were to hunt for anything edible for those who needed food and to comfort Kel. We were starting to wonder if we should risk sending one of us out, to head back down to Lanara, when a few scouts arrived.

They had been shifted into small birds, and were clearly exhausted by what must have been a harrowing journey across the wastes. We found out that, even with the breakup of the dark clouds over the continent, there were still enough dark forces striking out at night to make travel dangerous. The strange birds had been especially dangerous to the scouts.

“They’ve fallen to chaos, from what we can gather,” the one Elven scout said, devouring the jerky we’d given him.

“It’s a power vacuum, we’re guessing,” the other Elf added, while the first chewed. “That’s the thing about dark forces. They’re a bunch of ruthless backstabbers who only accept orders from someone they fear.”

“As long as the dark gods don’t choose another champion, we might just retake Aelvus by the year’s end,” the first said. “Especially with a new High Queen crowned.”

Ne’avo’s mouth twitched slightly, and I could tell she still wasn’t looking forward to the duties of the throne. Taking a moment to reassure the two scouts as best as I could, I then got up and led Ne’avo out of the chamber, to somewhere we could speak privately. She followed without complaint, though kept an eyebrow raised.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“I was just seeing how you’re still squirming about the whole monarch thing, and I was wondering... can you give away some of your power?” I asked.

“My... power?”

“Uhh... powers? Royal powers, I mean. Like, where I live back home, the monarchs basically don’t do anything? Well, all they really ever do in Canada is visit, since they’ve outsourced even just rubber stamping matters into law,” I said, trailing off a little. “I’m pretty sure we go years without a visit from the monarch.”

“Why don’t they live in the country they rule?” Ne’avo asked.

“Uh, well, they rule a few countries, and the most important one is the UK, which is over on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. It has almost twice as many people as Canada, I think? Er... but that’s not the main point. The main point is that parliament does everything. In Canada or the UK. The king just signs whatever they hand him,” I said. “Do you think you could get away with setting up something like that?”

Ne’avo blinked, before giving a slow nod. “I... maybe? I mean, Nemza was almost the rightful queen. Maybe I could use that to scare people into realising change would be good... especially since she’s not exactly the first person in the family to go a little wacko.”

“Really?”

“Mhm,” she replied with another nod. “None have gone as far as her, but there were lots of civil wars and such... dad suspected it was because of all the inbreeding. That’s why mum was the least-related-to-him woman he could marry.”

“I... how inbred are we--actually, no. Please don’t tell me,” I said, trying to get memories about Ancient Egypt and Medieval Europe out of my brain.